Shaping a Greener Future: South Tyneside's Climate Summit Charts Path to Net Zero

South Tyneside Council has staged a five-day Climate Summit to help shape the borough's journey to Net Zero.

The event last week brought together businesses, public sector organisations and community groups to map the borough's carbon reduction targets and the action needed to achieve them.

The summit aimed to share knowledge, successes and lessons learned and will be used to inform the next Sustainable South Tyneside strategy.

Last year the council revealed that, in common with many other local authorities, it would be unlikely to meet its target of carbon neutrality by 2030 because of external factors such as the cost and rollout of new technologies.

This is despite embedding sustainability into all its operations, increasing its renewable capabilities and moving to cleaner, more secure energy sources, which contributed to hitting its first interim target of a 25 per cent reduction by 2023.

Key themes emerging from the week included renewable energy, sustainable business and supply chains, skills, reporting, community energy, and partnership working.

Cllr Ernest Gibson, Lead Member for Neighbourhoods and Climate Change, said: "It was an exciting and though-provoking week.

"It helped identify both opportunities and barriers to reducing our carbon footprint and we know we have a huge task ahead of us.

"Sustainability is everyone's responsibility, and our refreshed strategy needs to set out how we can take our communities on this journey with us."

 The programme included site visits to the UK-first multi-award-winning Viking Energy Network at Jarrow and Equinor, the operations and maintenance base of the Dogger Bank Wind Farm at the Port of Tyne. There was also a business expo, a community energy workshop and a presentation about the upcoming Carbon and Nature Marketplace by the North East Combined Authority.

Lee Jackson, Managing Director of Smart Carbon, a greenhouse consultancy which helps businesses to measure and report their carbon emissions, delivered a speech on day two of the summit and talked of the 'domino effect' of organisations tracking emissions from supply chains.

He said: "A measurement of only your direct emissions is not a complete carbon footprint.

"You might be buying goods and services from all over the world, and for most organisations their indirect emissions will be bigger than their direct emissions and understanding that is vital if they are to take an realistic action about reducing their footprint

The impact of that is we are now seeing organisations tasking their suppliers with decarbonising their own businesses."

South Tyneside College also spoke at the event about their work to upskill the region's workforce for green jobs of the future.

Dan Raw, Director of STEM Construction and Green Initiatives, said: "It's not only about training young people in future careers but upskilling and retraining the existing workforce. For example, we might have people in the plumbing and heating industry who are qualified and experienced in fitting gas boilers, who now need to learn the skills for installing air source heat pumps, and longer term, maintaining them. "

Learning from the summit will now inform a refreshed Sustainable South Tyneside Strategy.

Cllr Gibson added: "We've always been ambitious in our climate change goals, and we've been genuine leaders when it comes to innovation and taking every opportunity to decarbonise.

"Now we need everyone to play their part in creating a greener, cleaner borough."